Rebirth or Transformation?
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
It seems to me that the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth is somewhat simplistic. From observing the natural world it seems to me that all things continually transform… the tree leaves become mulch, the cloud becomes rain, the nectar becomes honey… the world is full of things that are naturally becoming other things.
It feels to me that the same thing is true for humans. Our bodies become ash on a woodpile in a burning ghat along the Ganges, and the ash is strewn out to feed the trees or the algae in the water, eventually to become part of a bush or other plant. My nighttime wanderings have left me to think that perhaps this happens to our minds as well.
That mind and consciousness after death are repurposed, made anew into some kind of being in the astral spaces. That different people’s destinies are not the same, according to what you achieve in life. That we can end up in various realms, not always connected to the light, but part of vast mental spaces and dimensions. That the afterlife is endlessly more complex than we thought.
“Let the base from the speakers run through your sneakers…” Random song lyric for the day.
Comments
Oh God! What if getting a description of the indescribable, isn't possible?
What if the only thing that could describe anything, ceases with death?
Could we just be a temporarily assembled taxi cab for karma's travel convenience?
Each religion's storyline seems to be an appeasement of their congregation's fears.
Buddhism's afterlife stories conveniently confirm their own unique doctrines just like any other religion does.
Fortunately, the spiritual experiences of each devotee in the endless range of differing religions unwaveringly manage to stay in their own respective lanes.
Just more hot spiritual Florida property for sale just below the high tide mark?
Anyone have a good description for spiritual adulthood?
Life is a treat. Death not.
eh?
Perhaps it appears to be simplistic (or not) because of our remaining attachment to name and form. Does the saint exist or not exist after death, or the saint, who has been released, deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the ocean?
What saints? Buddhism does not have saints as such. Are you a Christian or X-Christian?
Clearly not.
Therefore I can only assume you wish to drown. Jump like the Jains or allow time to take its course...
Seeing change or impermanence is one of the gateway to liberation. Change or transformation implies emptiness or anatta which is the lack of essence/ego/selfhood.
The changes that are apparent are like surface activities of waves unlike the depths of the ocean where no change is apparent.
What in your experience is not subject to change?
The Buddhist scripture i read say do gooders are reborn in heaven & the bad guys are reborn in hell.
I've tried to wrap my head around the logistics of rebirth a few times and found that the only way it makes sense to me is that we are all incarnations of each other. Of life itself. Every child being born right now could be about to live one of our lives. Their own unique Jataka tale.
Who doesn't like a good story?
Michael Newton made an attempt to make it work with soul families and multiple incarnations.
Personally, if the mind is not reincarnated, and most of the memory gets left behind, then what marks the karmic stream you inherit as “yours”? It could be just a random bundle of karma…
The idea of world filled with karma and rebirth where the actions we sow have no bearing on the fruits we reap turns me off. It doesn't seem to bother others though, I don't understand how, if anyone is able to explain it to me.
It becomes an eternal effort to right the wheel, @person. At birth you get assigned some karmic stream to try to bring to fruition, you spend your life doing that, and when you die you pass it on.
@person
Some might say that...
The actions we sow do have a potential for fruition within our lifespan but if they are not resolved during our lifespan, their momentum will simply continue and coalesce with other unresolved karma as the sparks and inheritance that bring the next being into existence, as the means of potentially addressing & resolving that which initiated that karma.
That is why past life experiences are actually teachings or re-enactments of the consequences of continuing or repeating delusive actions that we seem to have predilections for.
Everyone pays for the cost of karma's existence. Only an ego/identity unable to face the truth of its own ethereal existence would reduce karma's dues to transactions that should be confined to the start & ending of a single life.
If you can make your life an expression of love, you will be undoing the knots of karma in the fabric of existence and raining blessings on those who come after. Whether the karma is “yours” or not doesn’t really matter, the idea of karma which is yours makes little sense in the view of there not being a self (I think). It is just your karma to look after in this life…
My understanding of the responses is there is something like a big mound of collective karma and it is a noble, rewarding path to lessen that for the sake of the world. I think I can appreciate that.
Still the thought of living a noble life for the sake of the world only to suffer a life of misery and torture as a non result doesn't sit well with me. To make efforts to secure a future situation where one could continue that work would be futile. Meditation isn't usually as pleasant as seeing a good show in the moment, but leads to a happier life as a result. If karmic results are random or collective, why not just leave the often difficult and unpleasant work to others and enjoy the good luck I have now while I happen to have it?
Because the difficult and hard work also carries rewards in the here and now?
@person
Have you, within a meditative practice of addressing karma's causes, had much success with just leaving the "often difficult and unpleasant work to others" , in a way that results in your enjoyment?
As an aside @person you seem to appreciate psychology, maybe this is something for you…
I'm not sure I fully understand you. I'd say I would rather take it easy and enjoy my current good fortune for myself than sacrifice it in service to others if at the end of that difficult work I have nothing to show for it. I suppose that means I'm not sufficiently self sacrificial. I'm cooperative and giving in contexts where there is some level of reciprocity such as family, friends and work. I'll be generous first to strangers, but yeah if there isn't some promise of reciprocity I won't sacrifice my own well being for others.
I think I can appreciate the value in that. It's the leaving my future to chance that's a hard pill for me to swallow. Nothing is certain, but certain actions increase the probability of some things happening more than others.
In general I feel like I construct my beliefs around what can be empirically demonstrated or at least more likely. But I think this thread is showing me that I have some implicit beliefs around karma and rebirth that these other views challenge. I guess in the absence of any real evidence to sway me the Buddhist teachings I'm most familiar with talk about things like life to life spiritual development with things like once returners and bodhisattva stages, etc., so I'll stick with my current understanding of life to life karmic cause and effect.
In a way Buddhism is very safe, it presents a steady path to follow over many lives and once you’re a stream enterer success is guaranteed. That is part of its psychological appeal. But there is no actual proof for the afterlife portion of it, and experiences of people in near-death don’t show anything like the scriptures tell. So maybe things are not as we assume.
It depends on what evidence you’ll accept. NDEs are pretty strong evidence for a varied and multiform afterlife. The idea of transformation and “as nature in this world, so the next” is another logically strong contender.
The Buddha’s view has a lot of followers in this world, and so has a certain social pressure pushing it forward, but it isn’t the most logical view. The cosmology is rather suspect, the idea of rebirth has problems and was inherited from Hindus, and so on.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on it...
The mind on childhood, dream time, insanity, trauma e.g. NDE, drugs, hope for continuity etc etc etc IS NOT as regular meditators know any indication of evidence.
I thought it, therefore it is true, is trump level dharma.
... as some of us have long suspected/come to expect.
Then you’ve never really watched NDE testimonials or the books written about them, have you @lobster? These experiences genuinely change people’s lives. They become more sensitive, glowing, unafraid of death… often it takes them many years to come to terms with it. It is not just some lightweight experience which evaporates in a few months.
I have seen past life experiences be of significant education just as I've seen others create compounding delusions out of them. Just because something has an effect on you, doesn't make it true.
Mmm… the evidence, rather than the hallucination/fantasy?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8853446/
The thing is, when NDEs first appeared they weren’t “popular” or something. Even today, people who have had an NDE complain about not fitting in, and not wanting to talk about it because it is so often misunderstood by the religious. Often people who have had one don’t discuss it for many years.
A hallucination or fantasy doesn’t last long in the memory, they are fleeting. But people with an NDE often find they can recall it clearly years later. And the way it affects their lives is also interesting, you’d have to see it.
I’ve read a few books on NDEs and watched some videos on YouTube (which are more suspect I agree) but I’d say don’t judge it too quickly, it is an extraordinary phenomenon.